


now you're outside (you see all the beauty)

by cicer



Series: the war is over [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:44:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicer/pseuds/cicer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of their first victory, Steve moves into the penthouse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now you're outside (you see all the beauty)

The penthouse takes some getting used to.

For starters, Steve’s the only one — besides Tony, of course — who lives there right now. The only one who lives there _full-time_ , anyway. Natasha and Clint have rooms in the penthouse, but they spend most of their time at SHIELD. Steve can’t blame them for that. He knows how it is to be more comfortable in familiar barracks. Bruce stays at SHIELD, too, because he’s not authorized to live anywhere else yet. 

_That’s_ definitely something Steve intends to bring up with Fury in the near future. He understands Fury’s reasoning, but it’s still not right, locking up a man like that because they’re afraid of what he _might_ do. The timing isn’t right for that kind of talk, though. Not yet. Things are still too new, and they’re all jostling up against each other uneasily, haven’t found a rhythm yet. Fury was pleased with them at first, after the battle with Loki, but the honeymoon period is clearly coming to a close.

Steve has the sense that SHIELD isn’t entirely convinced that the Avengers are workable team, despite having a full save-the-world mission solidly under their belt. Now that Steve thinks about it, the scattered living arrangements probably aren’t helping to give an impression of unity. But it can’t really be helped. Living full-time at the penthouse just isn’t an option for some of them.

But the Avengers needed a headquarters. Steve had thought SHIELD HQ would serve that purpose just fine, but Tony categorically refused to make any kind of habit of visiting SHIELD, so his house was drafted by default. It’s certainly big enough, plenty big for all of them to live there all the time. But Steve’s the only one who agreed to move in full-time, and that was just because he was so sick of the SHIELD barracks that he’d have moved in with Tony even if the man lived in a mud hut.

The place takes some getting used to, though. Tony forgets to tell him things about the way the house is run. It’s not like anyplace else Steve has ever seen, and for a while he’s almost sick with culture-shock, thinking that this is the way _every_ house is in the future, until Ms. Potts explains otherwise. She does her best to pick up Tony’s slack. She shows him around, introduces him to JARVIS — who Steve isn’t even remotely comfortable with — and tells him to call her if something goes wrong and Tony isn’t around to help. 

Despite its high-tech amenities, the penthouse still isn’t the most comfortable place in the world. It’s beautiful, strange as it is. Steve can see that. To be sure, the decor is a lot more modern than he’d have chosen, if it were his place. But it’s still stunning, with smooth sweeping lines and the shine of chrome everywhere. The carpeting is ridiculously plush, and the furniture varies between being so delicate that Steve is afraid he’ll break it, to being so enormous that Steve feels dwarfed by it. The views outside the floor-to-ceiling windows are nothing short of incredible, and Steve feels like he’s living in a science fiction novel, with all the technological additions. It’s fascinating, but overwhelming too, the way he can’t take two steps without falling over a button that opens up the roof or makes giant computer screens pop up on the windows. 

The thing is, the whole place is ridiculously huge. It’d be too big for twenty people, and with just Steve and Tony living there, well, Steve feels like he’s living in a mausoleum most of the time. Tony is barely around, and Steve spends most of his time winding through endless halls, trying to navigate between his bedroom to the front door. It takes a distressingly long time just to move from one room to another. 

It’s still a pleasure to be out of the SHIELD facility, though. For the first time in months, Steve doesn’t have anybody breathing down his throat or trying to keep him locked up inside, and he takes full advantage of it. He goes for long runs, circling farther and farther out, trying to get used to the way things have changed. He gets whiplash sometimes, passing by a tall gleaming skyscraper and remembering that there used to be a deli there, or an apartment building, or a post office. 

When that happens, it makes something sour rise up in the back of his throat. The city is familiar, but at the same time, it’s really not. There’s nothing Steve can do about it, though. So he gets up at dawn and runs until he can’t run anymore, and then he makes his way back to the penthouse. 

He’d been prepared for crowds, when he moved in. It seemed like a cluster of people surrounded Tony Stark wherever he went, and Steve thought the man’s house would be the same. But it’s not. Stark Tower is always full of people, of course, but there’s a private underground garage where Steve — and, evidently, Tony — leaves and comes in. There’s an elevator down there too, and it takes you right up to the penthouse, so you can get in and out without anybody seeing you. 

The privacy is great, of course. It soothes Steve’s nerves after the months at SHIELD with countless agents and doctors and administrators wanting a look at him. But the echoing emptiness of the penthouse starts to get to him before long. He doesn’t want to bother Ms. Potts — who told him to call her ‘Pepper’, but he can’t manage that yet — so he tries to figure things out as much as possible on his own, but it’s hard. They’re just _nobody there_. There aren’t even any cleaning people or anything. That’s probably for the best, because it just would’ve made Steve uncomfortable, having an army of servants hanging around, waiting on his requests. But what’s in their place isn’t much better. 

It rattles Steve the first time it happens, which is two days after he moves in. He’d gone for a run, and come back to his room to find...a _thing_ making up his bed. He wasn’t even sure what the thing _was_. A robot, his mind whispers, but it isn’t...it isn’t anything he’s ever seen before. It’s short and squat, set on some kind of wheels that Steve can’t see but which let it roll around the room smoothly. It has long metallic...well, Steve supposes they’re _fingers_ , but thinking of them that way is just unnerving. 

Carefully, it plucks the sheets off his bed and deposits them in a nearby hamper. A tidy stack of clean, neatly-pressed bedsheets rests on a nearby table. The robot unfolds them and starts spreading them over the bed while Steve stares. 

“Um,” he says, stupidly. 

The robot ignores him, of course. It doesn’t even look at him, but why would it, Steve wonders hysterically. It doesn’t even have _eyes_. 

“Excuse me?” he ventures, after a moment. He doesn’t really expect a response, and he’s surprised when the robot stops what it’s doing and swivels its — head? the part the fingers emerge from, anyway — in his direction. 

Steve stares. He thinks maybe the robot is staring back, but of course he can’t be sure. The now-familiar sensation of having stepped into another world sweeps over him and it makes him feel a little nauseated. 

After a few seconds of silence, the robot turns around and goes back to what it was doing. Steve is left standing in the middle of the room, sweaty and clutching his trainers, trying to figure out what he’s supposed to do.

“Captain?”

The voice echoes a little, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once, and Steve jumps about a foot. He’s not used to it. He keeps forget that this...this JARVIS computer-thing is always there, always watching. He tries not to think about it too much, honestly. 

“May I offer any assistance, Captain?”

Steve swallows. He doesn’t know who told it to call him ‘Captain’. Maybe no one did. Maybe it figured that out on its own. Steve doesn’t have the faintest idea how smart it is, and doesn’t really want to find out. 

“No. Thank you,” he adds, automatically. He doesn’t know if you’re supposed to thank computers or not, but JARVIS can _talk_ , it can respond to him. And it knows the house a lot better than he does, obviously, so it somehow feels rude to talk to it like it’s not a person. 

“Are you certain, sir?” 

JARVIS sounds _skeptical_ , like it doesn’t believe him, and Steve just doesn’t know what to make of that. At all.

“Uh.” He gestures at the robot, unsure whether or not JARVIS can see him. “It’s. What is...this?” 

The robot pauses in its work and beeps, like it knows it’s being discussed. Steve takes a very small step back.

“That is one of the cleaning ‘bots, sir. It tidies the rooms and performs minor maintenance work.” JARVIS pauses. “Would you like it to leave, sir?” 

“Um.” Steve doesn’t know what to say. The robot has gone back to making the bed, its movements sharp and almost pointed, as if it knows that Steve doesn’t want it there. Maybe it _does_. “No. It’s fine. I was just...surprised,” Steve finishes lamely. 

He’d been expecting that Tony had some kind of cleaning service or something, because nobody would expect a billionaire to clean his own absurdly-large penthouse. But Steve had been expecting...well, _people_. 

The robot finishes making the bed, very neatly and with hospital corners. It piles the dirty sheets in a hamper, and Steve notices belatedly that there are some of his own clothes in there, the ones he left in the basket he found in his closet. He’d planned to ask somebody where he was supposed to take his laundry. He’d actually been prepared to do it himself. But there’s a tidy pile of yesterday’s clothes lying on his desk, clearly washed and ironed, and the little robot is toting away the pajamas Steve had left in the hamper when he woke up that morning. 

It’s hard to tell, because the penthouse is always immaculately clean, but Steve is pretty sure that the room has been dusted in his absence. There are vacuum lines in the carpet. He smooths his sweaty shirt over his stomach and peeks into the bathroom. There are clean towels on the rack, and a bathrobe folded up on the edge of the bath. Steve licks his lips. 

The little robot finishes gathering up its things and heads for the door. 

“Thank you,” Steve calls out, before he can think about it too much. 

The robot pauses and beeps in what sounds like a friendly way. Then it leaves. 

Steve drops his shoes on the bathroom floor. They leave smear of mud across the white marble, and Steve is immediately hit with a wash of guilt. He reaches down and wipes off the mud with his thumb, and then he has to wash his hands in the enormous sink. 

It’s crazy, how huge and fancy Tony’s house is, but somehow it hits Steve the hardest when he’s in this room. It’s _his_ room now, or so Tony had said, offhand and disconcertingly casual as he shooed Steve into it the first day. Steve had tried to protest that the room was way too big, way too much. He didn’t need all this space, he said. He definitely didn’t need his own bathroom.

But Tony just stared at him blankly and said that all the rooms were the same size, and they all had ensuite — that was what he’d called them, _ensuite_ — baths. Tony clearly didn’t get it, and why should he? If he’d grown up like this...

Steve rinses his hands and reluctantly dries them on one of the clean thick towels piled up by the sink. He hates touching them. He’s constantly afraid he’ll ruin them, but he doesn’t think Tony would notice or even care if he did. He tries hard not to resent Tony for that. It’s wouldn’t be fair to be angry at him for not realizing how much he has. Steve _knows_ that. He knows that Tony didn’t ask to grow up rich anymore than Steve asked to grow up poor. It’s just...difficult sometimes.

It’s not like poverty is a thing of the past. It isn’t: Steve knows that much. He reads the newspapers every morning. One of the first things he did when he moved in was ask Tony if he could get newspapers somewhere. 

Tony didn’t understand it, of course. He tried to show Steve how to use one of the tiny computers he always carried around, because apparently you could read the newspapers on those things. But Steve wanted real newspapers, so Tony made a face and shrugged. The next morning and every morning after that, there was a fresh copy of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal on the kitchen table. 

Steve reads them cover to cover every morning after his run. He reads every article, sometimes twice. They’d given him a file back at SHIELD, to help catch him up, but that wasn’t enough. Sure, it told him about all the things that had happened in the past seventy years, but it hadn’t told him what the people who were around today _felt_ about all of it. There’s a gaping chasm between the hard facts and public perception of those facts, and Steve knows it. So he reads the newspapers and lingers over the editorials. 

Poverty is still around. So is crime, and so is war. Steve’s not surprised by that. He’s not that naive. But it’s still disappointing to see that millions of people all around the world are living in the gutters while others live in huge high-rises and have private planes and dozens of cars, and people whose job it is to bring them whatever they want. 

It’s completely unfair to blame Tony for all of that. Steve knows it, but it’s still hard.

Howard had been rich, but not like this. Steve remembers what Howard used to be like. He remembers Howard’s sharp suits and expensive cologne, but he also remembers Howard with his sleeves bunched up around his elbows, his face smeared with grease while he worked on the engine of one of the army cars. He remembers the way Howard would buy all the guys a couple rounds of drinks every time they hit the pub, not to show off his money, but just because he liked having a good time. He hadn’t been the kind of guy who shoved his money in other people’s face.

But, as far as Steve can tell, Howard built a whole empire after Steve was gone. He apparently made so much money that his old fortune looked like nothing beside it. Steve doesn’t like to think of it, but maybe the money changed him. Maybe the money made him the way Tony is, self-absorbed and careless about his own wealth. Maybe Howard forgot what it was like to sit at a table full of ordinary guys who sometimes hadn’t had more than two dimes in their pocket. 

Nobody has much to say about Howard, these days. Not really. Nobody talks about the man himself, anyway. But everybody talks about his inventions, and even though the two of them aren’t exactly close, Steve can see that Tony carries on his father’s legacy. He may have even outstripped him. Steve watched Howard make some incredible things, but he has a hard time imagining that even Howard could’ve made something like the Iron Man suit. 

So, Steve gets it. Tony’s not some spoiled rich brat who’s never done an honest day’s work. Steve knows that. Anybody who’s willing to go out there and put their life on the line to protect others is someone Steve can respect. But it’s hard for him to reconcile that version of Tony — the Tony who puts on the suit and fights criminals — with the Tony who rides around in a chauffeur-driven limousine and gets chased around by photographers and journalists, like he’s a movie star rather than a businessman or scientist. 

It’s hard to remember that Tony _does_ work, that he maybe even deserves all things he has, when it feels like they’re being pushed in Steve’s face all the time. Steve reminds himself that that isn’t fair, because it’s Tony’s house, and Tony’s letting him live there for free. Of course Tony’s allowed to have anything he wants in his own house. 

It’s just _hard_. Because there’s a Picasso in the living room, an _actual Picasso_ , and when Steve saw it the first time he couldn’t do anything but stare for a couple of minutes. Then he started talking, more than he had in months, because it was an actual _Picasso_ , right in somebody’s house, and Tony had to know something about it. Steve thought, for a minute, that maybe he and Tony had some common ground.

But Tony just stared at him and shrugged. He said that Pepper was the one who bought it, and if Steve wanted to know more about it, he should ask her. He said it like having Picasso, having someone buy a Picasso on your behalf, was nothing. 

It was hard to like Tony when he did things like that. But Tony could be generous sometimes too.

The day Steve moved in, while he was still unpacking, Tony burst into his room without even knocking. His arms were loaded down with a bunch of little machines, which he dumped unceremoniously on Steve’s bed. 

Steve had been putting away his clothes, and he stands there staring until he realizes he’s holding a pair of underwear in his hands. He shoves those into the nearest drawer and slams it shut. 

Tony surveys the pile of electronics and nods. Then he rounds on Steve. 

“There. That should be everything you need. JARVIS’ll help you get it set up. Charging station’s over there.” He indicates the metallic structure on Steve’s desk. Steve had been wondering what that was supposed to be. 

Tony sifts through the pile methodically and points out each item in turn, lining them up on the bedspread. 

“Computer. MP3 player. Cell phone. Tablet.” He jabs a finger in Steve’s direction. “Stark tech only in this house, you understand? I catch you with any Hammer shit and I’ll toss you out on your star-spangled butt.” 

Steve nods like this makes sense. He doesn’t even object to the ‘star-spangled butt’ thing, because apparently Tony is giving him a present. And Steve doesn’t understand much about modern technology, but he can’t imagine that the pile of sleek, shining electronics on his bed is anything but expensive. 

Tony nods grimly, as if he’s satisfied that he and Steve finally understand each other. Then he executes a turn that would make any military man proud and strides out of the room.

Steve’s still not one hundred percent sure how to work the computer, but the cell phone is easy enough to figure out. The _phone_ part of it, anyway. Apparently it can also be used to do things like access the internet, and there are things called “apps” that do something special, too. But Steve doesn’t even _try_ to figure that out. He concentrates on trying to learn how to make calls. 

The phone comes with a preset lists of phone numbers, so that all Steve has to do is push a button and he can call SHIELD, or Ms. Potts, or Tony himself. It seems simple enough, though Steve hasn’t actually tried calling anybody. He doesn’t really know who’d he call, doesn’t know anybody who’d want to talk to him. 

He takes to spending his time reading on the tablet Tony gave him. It’s one of the few pieces of modern technology that Steve’s sure he likes. He still prefers the idea of holding a real book in his hands, but it’s certainly nice to be able to press a button and download any book he can think of, and start reading right away. He’s got a lot of literature to catch up on, but catching up on that will be a pleasure. 

Catching up on everything else is a chore. SHIELD gave him a thick binder with condensed information about all the major technological, medical, and socio-political events of the past seventy years. Steve has skimmed most of it, and keeps meaning to go back in and read the whole thing properly, but he gets depressed every time he picks it up. 

So, he reads. He goes for long walks down strange, half-familiar streets. He eats a hot dog in Central Park. 

One day, he stops by SHIELD for a visit. It makes him feel foolish, because it’s not like he’s really missing anyone there. But the agents all say hello to him, and he runs into Natasha and Clint. He has coffee with them in the canteen, and they tell him what they can about their most recent mission. Most of it’s classified, but they share some funny stories about things that happened on the plane ride back, and that’s sort of nice. But then they have to go someplace, and Steve is left sitting by himself in the cafeteria with a half-filled cup of cold coffee in his hand. 

It’s pretty clear there’s nothing left for him at SHIELD. 

Steve goes for another walk, heads back to the penthouse, and investigates the overflowing refrigerator. He eats supperand lets JARVIS choose a television show for him to watch. It’s a western. Steve likes it. After it ends, he asks JARVIS to put on the news, and makes himself memorize all the names and places and events that are mentioned. 

He goes to bed. He sleeps. He wakes up and starts the pattern over again. Within a few days, he settles into a steady schedule. The regularity is comforting, but somehow having a schedule makes the vast emptiness of the penthouse even stranger.

Tony keeps odd hours. Steve figures that out pretty quickly. Mostly, he figures it out from Tony’s absence. He’s never around when Steve expects, never turns up when Steve’s having lunch or supper, and Steve almost never runs into him during the day. His first week at the penthouse, he sees Tony only twice. Once, late in the evening, when Tony darts into the kitchen, gathers up an armload of Chinese takeout and disappears downstairs again before Steve can say a word. 

The second time he runs into Tony, it’s early in the morning, when Steve’s just heading out for a run. He stops in the kitchen first for a glass of water and almost collides with Tony where he’s standing at the stove. Steve actually does a double-take, because he hasn’t seen Tony in three days and he’s almost forgotten that Tony actually lives here. It’s even stranger seeing Tony in the kitchen.

Tony is cracking eggs into a pan, adding in pinches of things from the line of glass spice jars that live on the back of the stove. 

Steve stands in the doorway and watches for a minute, struck by the strangeness of seeing Tony Stark cooking. For a split second, he’s hit by a intense wave of nostalgia. It’s been so long since he’s stood in a kitchen and watched someone else cook. 

Tony doesn’t seem to realize that he’s there, and after a couple of seconds Steve feels embarrassed that he’s just standing there, watching. He sidles up to the counter awkwardly and reaches over Tony’s shoulder so that he can get a glass out of the cupboard. 

When he leans in, Steve smells butter and pepper, and the rich hearty smell of something being cooked on a griddle. He doesn’t want to intrude, and he’s keenly aware that he’s kind of deep into Tony’s personal space at the moment, but he can’t help stopping to take a deep breath. 

It’s been so long since he smelled fresh-cooked _anything_. He’d had to get used to camp rations during the war, and the stuff in the SHIELD cafeteria wasn’t much better. The meals that are delivered to the penthouse every day in warm Styrofoam containers are good, obviously gourmet, but not really homemade. Steve takes another sniff.

Tony, slowly stirring the eggs, pauses for a minute and seems to register Steve’s presence. He half-turns and blinks.

Steve startles a little, once he gets a good look at Tony. He looks...well, not _awful_ , exactly. He’s a handsome man. Steve can admit that to himself. Howard had been handsome, too, but Tony has a certain vividness of expression, an uncommon symmetry to his features that make him even more handsome than his father had been. Steve thinks he would like to draw Tony, sometime, but he hasn’t yet. It doesn’t feel right, somehow. Steve’s used to drawing people he knows well, or doesn’t know at all. Tony exists in an odd, in-between territory, and sketching him feels like an intrusion.

But, yes, Tony is handsome, handsome enough that Steve doesn’t think anyone could ever honestly say that he _looks awful_ , but he doesn’t look very _well_ right now. He’s pale and glassy-eyed, and there are dark circles under his eyes. His clothing is rumpled, as if he’s slept in it, but he clearly hasn’t been sleeping. Not recently, anyhow. There’s a fresh streak of grease across his collarbone and more grease smudged along his wrists. Tony has apparently washed his hands before he started cooking — which is a relief — but every other inch of him shows wear and fatigue.

Steve takes a careful step back.

Tony stands there at the stove and blinks at him, like he doesn’t quite recognize Steve. The eggs sizzle in the pan, and Steve resists the temptation to take the spatula away from Tony and stir the eggs before they start to burn.

“Tony?” he ventures cautiously, when Tony doesn’t do anything more than stare. 

“Hm?” 

Tony’s reply comes almost dreamily, as if he’s half-asleep. Steve has seen men fall asleep on their feet before. It happened pretty regularly back in the army. But Tony’s not swaying or wobbling, and after a couple of minutes his eyes focus a little better. 

“Your eggs,” Steve blurts, when the pan sizzles ominously.

Tony blinks again, and looks down at the pan as if he’s not sure how it got there. 

“Oh,” he says. He flips over the eggs. 

Steve stands there, watching, the empty glass still clutched in his hand. 

Tony turns down the gas and rummages around in the refrigerator. 

Steve fills his glass with water while Tony’s back is turned. He’s not really thirsty now, but he takes a sip anyway, because the alternative is staring at Tony as he practically climbs into the obscenely-large refrigerator. After few seconds, Tony emerges with a little packet of some kind of herb and a bag of shredded cheese. He tosses handfuls of both into the pan and stirs again. 

It only takes a minute for Steve polish off his glass of water. He spends the time trying _not_ stare at Tony too much, but he can’t help it. Whenever Steve has seen Tony previously, he’s been polished and pristine, tossing out insults and witty remarks, fully self-possessed. It’s strange seeing him like this, exhausted and disheveled, cooking eggs like a real person. Not that Steve didn’t know Tony was a real person, of course. It just...it hadn’t sunk in, somehow. 

He should probably leave. Steve studies his empty glass, and then puts it in the sink. He should leave. He only came into the kitchen for some water, and he got that, and now he should go. He could stay, maybe, if Tony wanted him too. If Tony asked. But he hasn’t asked, and Steve...

Steve’s just trying not to make a nuisance of himself. He’s been trying to tidy up after himself, but the robots always get to that before he does. He’s trying not to eat up too much of the food in Tony’s huge refrigerator, or hog the living room sofa when Tony might want to use it. But Tony’s never around, so it’s actually sort of hard to make a point of staying out of his way. 

The least he could do, should do, is let Tony alone if he wants to cook some eggs. But Tony’s eyes are going glassy again, and Steve is sort of worried that he might fall asleep and end up setting the kitchen on fire. 

“Hey.” Steve touches Tony’s shoulder very lightly, but it still makes Tony flinch and blink up at him. “Uh. I can finish that for you. If you want.” He indicates the eggs.

Tony looks between Steve and the pan, and back. He tilts his head a little bit, like Steve has started speaking a foreign language, one Tony might have some familiarity with but which he can’t quite parse at the moment. 

This close, Steve is keenly aware of several things about Tony. The first is that Tony’s quite a bit shorter than he is. Tony has to tip his head back quite a bit to look up at Steve. Even though his tousled hair is probably adding an inch or more to his height, he barely comes up to Steve’s nose. 

It’s something Steve never realized before. It’s hard to get a read on Tony’s physique. He’s always moving so fast, darting here and there, in and out of the Iron Man suit. And even in the rare moments he’s standing still, Steve has always seen him in a suit and sunglasses and expensive shoes, projecting the aura of a man who is larger than life. It’s sort of hard to remember that there’s an actual person under there, a person who wears worn, crumpled, grease-stained tee shirts and makes eggs in his bare feet. 

There are little rings of green around Tony’s irises, speckled with gold slowly bleeding into brown. His eyelashes are long, like a dame’s, and he keeps blinking at Steve like he’s not sure who’s in the kitchen with him. Or maybe he’s just trying to keep from falling asleep at the stove. Steve’s not sure.

He carefully takes the spatula from Tony’s lax fingers and gives the eggs one last stir. They’re almost done, so he turns off the gas and moves the pan off the heat Tony watches him with a slight furrow between his eyes. Steve gets out a plate for him, and a fork and knife, and puts them on the kitchen table. He dishes up the eggs. They’re still hot. 

“Give them a couple minutes to cool,” he tells Tony. He immediately feels ridiculous. He’s talking to Tony like he’s a _child_ , like he wouldn’t know not to burn himself. But Tony doesn’t seem all there at the moment, and Steve has seen men do pretty stupid things when they’re running on too little sleep. 

Because he doesn’t know what else to do, Steve steers Tony to a chair and puts the eggs in front of him. Tony studies them for a while before poking them with a fork. Steve gets himself another glass of water and drinks it too fast. 

He wants to hang around for a while. Wants to talk to Tony a little more. Or, talk _at_ Tony, maybe, because Tony’s not very responsive right now. Maybe that’s what’s catching Steve’s interest. He usually can’t get in two words edgewise when Tony talks to him. He sort of likes Tony like this, quiet and rumpled, picking at his food and swinging one of his feet slowly over the polished floor. 

Steve washes his glass, dries it, and puts it back in the cupboard. He tells himself there’s no point in staying. It’s not like Tony even realizes he’s there. 

“I’m going for a run,” he says. “I’ll be back in a little while.” 

He can’t quite get over the impulse to inform Tony of his plans and whereabouts. Tony clearly doesn’t care, and why should he? Steve’s a grown man. He’s not under Tony’s custody. It seems like the polite thing to do, to let his host know where he’s going and when he’ll be back, but it’s not as if he’s going to disrupt any of Tony’s plans. It’s not like Tony’ll be holding off on dinner, waiting for him. 

Tony stops picking at his eggs and lifts his gaze. 

“Okay,” he says, after a moment of silence. It seems like it takes a while for Steve’s words to penetrate. Steve can almost see the gears turning.

There’s a little smear of axle grease over the bridge of his nose, and Steve has to fight the impulse to get a towel and wipe it off. He settles for drying his damp hands on a scrap of paper toweling, which he pitches in the bin under the sink. 

He makes his escape.

The air outside is cold and crisp, and sinks deep into his lungs. Sometimes Steve forgets that he doesn’t have to worry about things like that anymore. He used to have to stay inside when it got cold. Used to have to bolt the windows and build up the fire, because a lungful of cold winter air was enough to trigger another asthma attack. He doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. He can breathe deep, run hard, sweat his way through ten miles without worrying about his body having to pay for it later. Sometimes, it makes him push himself all the harder, like he’s got to make up for his new comforts. 

But he’s healthy, and for many years he thought he’d never be able to say that. He’s alive, and he’s gotten to the point where he’s grateful for that again. He has to be. Anything else would be an insult to their memory — Bucky, Peggy, Howard, all of them. They wouldn’t have wanted him to mope and sulk and feel sorry for himself because he had a chance to live again.

So Steve tries to be grateful. He’s healthy and alive, and he’s got the chance to do something good with his life. He’s got the chance to help people, and that’s what he always wanted, more than anything: to have his life really mean something. He’s got all that now, and he’s a little ashamed of the months he spent huddled underground in the SHIELD base, hiding away from the world and wallowing in self-pity over everything he’d lost. That’s not the person he wants to be. He’s got a lot to be grateful for, and Steve thinks it’s time he started acting like it. 

He turns that thought over and over in his mind while he runs. He feels like he could run for hours, sometimes, and he’s tempted to keep going a little longer than is strictly necessary. But he’s hungry, and he’s determined not to avoid things anymore, and that means going back to the penthouse. 

He takes the elevator up to the penthouse and removes his muddy shoes and sweat-stained jacket at the threshold. His footsteps echo on the polished floors. It’s always so quiet, and sometimes it gets on his nerves a little. But he found out that JARVIS will play music for him if he asks, and that helps. 

Steve puts his things away in his room and showers quickly. His stomach is already making embarrassing noises. He tries to hold off on breakfast until after his run, because running on an full stomach is never a good idea, no matter how fast his metabolism is these days. But some mornings he’s so hungry by the time he gets back that he feels a little bit lightheaded. 

He hurries into a pair of slacks and a plain shirt, and runs a towel over his hair. It still drips a little on his collar, but nobody’s around to see it. Tony, Steve thinks, must be long gone. 

Except he’s not. When Steve cuts through the living room on his way to the kitchen, he startles, because Tony is actually in there for once, curled up on the couch and deeply asleep. 

Steve stares. He doesn’t mean to. But Tony’s face is relaxed, and Steve never realized it before, but he’s never seen Tony relaxed before. At all. Tony is a lot of things, as far as Steve can tell, but relaxed isn’t one of them.

He’s lying on his side, half-burrowed into the couch cushions, his knees pulled up like a child. One hand is dangling over the edge of the sofa, fingers curled into a loose fist. There are little marks on Tony’s hand, little scrapes and burns, grease edged around the sides of the nails. They don’t look like the hands of a rich businessman. They look more like the hands of one of the guys who worked at the garage a block away from the apartment where Steve grew up. He knew plenty of the mechanics from school, and they always had those coal-black rings around their nails, no matter how often they washed up. 

Steve knows Tony’s story. A bit of it, anyway. He read Tony’s file, knows that he got kidnapped in Afghanistan and his heart was damaged, and he created the arc reactor to keep it going. He knows that the arc reactor is what powers the suit. He’s not altogether clear on which came first, though, and he’s not clear on exactly what the arc reactor does. The people at SHIELD talk about it in hushed, reverent tones. Steve doesn’t have the faintest idea what an arc reactor actually _is_ , other than some kind of energy source that was supposed to be impossible to make, till Tony went ahead and made it. The people at SHIELD want it, and the government wants it, but Tony hasn’t shared it with anybody, hasn’t started manufacturing it or anything. 

He _could_ , Steve’s pretty sure. But he hasn’t, and as far as anybody knows, the only arc reactor on earth is the one in Tony’s chest. There’s a bigger story there, one Steve would like to hear, but he’s not an idiot. He can tell when something might be a sensitive topic. He and Tony aren’t at the point where they can talk about things like being kidnapped and injured in the line of duty. Maybe they never will be. And that’s probably all right, Steve tells himself. They don’t actually have to be friends to work together. They can make the Avengers work even if they aren’t buddies. All the same, Steve thinks he would like it if they could be friends someday.

For now, though, he doesn’t know what to do. Tony’s clearly dead to the world, and it doesn’t feel right to just leave him there on the couch, but it feels even less right to try and move him. Steve searches around the living room until he finds a soft throw folded in one of the drawers in a cabinet. He lays it over Tony carefully, half-expecting that he’ll wake up or push the blanket away. But he doesn’t move, and Steve backs out of the room slowly before he can knock anything over and wake Tony up.

Back in the kitchen, the eggs are still right where he left them. They clearly haven’t been touched beyond Tony’s half-hearted prodding. Steve wonders why Tony went to the trouble of making the eggs if he wasn’t going to eat them. Maybe he got tired and couldn’t finish them. Steve considers whether he should wrap them up and put them in the refrigerator, save them for later. But reheated eggs are never any good. 

He stares at the plate, and sighs when his stomach rumbles. Steve thinks, _waste not, want not_. He picks up the fork he laid out for Tony and digs in. They’re surprisingly good. Fluffy, spicy, and still just a little bit warm. Steve devours the whole plate before he can even stop and think about it. 

Afterward, he washes up and makes coffee and toast. JARVIS helps, because Steve figured out pretty early on that all the appliances in the kitchen had been tinkered with. Steve had thought they looked awfully complicated when he moved in, but when he works up his nerve to take a closer look, it’s obvious that none of the appliances are designed in anything resembling an intuitive way. 

“I’m afraid Master Stark has performed some... _custom_ upgrades,” JARVIS tells him regretfully, when Steve gets a face full of wet coffee grounds after he tries to start the coffee-maker. “Shall I assist you?”

Steve’s making a point of putting aside his pride and accepting help these days, so he puts the toast where JARVIS tells him and lets him handle the rest. It’s not so bad. The coffee is good, and so is the toast. So were the eggs. Steve sort of wishes Tony had made some more, and wonders if there’s any possibility that Tony might cook something else in the near future. 

Not that he thinks it’s Tony’s job to do that, of course. Tony’s a busy man. Steve knows that. It’s just been a really long time since anybody cooked for him, and he’s almost forgotten how much he missed it. How nice it is, to sit in the kitchen with somebody else and listen to the sound of a knife on a cutting board, the sizzle of oil in a saucepan. 

Maybe Tony can be his friend. Or, failing that, maybe Steve can be _Tony’s_ friend. He’s not what Steve was expecting, when he was introduced to Howard Stark’s son, and Steve honestly didn’t like him too much at first, but maybe they can get past that. Steve thought, at first, that it wouldn’t matter if he and Tony hated each other, but its awfully hard to live with someone and watch them make eggs and fall asleep on the sofa without liking them a little bit. And Steve feels, selfishly, that if he’s going to like Tony, he would like for Tony to like him back. 

Steve finishes cleaning the kitchen. Then he sits down at the table and puts his head on the counter. 

He was never very good at making friends. Other people, people like Bucky, had a knack for it, but it was a trick Steve had never picked up. He had always just accumulated friends through Bucky. But now he’s on his own, and he has to figure it out for himself. 

Steve thinks wryly that he might’ve been better off if he just kept on thinking Tony was a jerk. At least that would’ve spared him from having to try to sort out how people are supposed to make friends in this day and age, when he wasn’t even all that good at making friends before.

But that’s a _challenge_ , and if there’s one thing Steve prides himself on, it’s never backing down from a challenge.

**Author's Note:**

> We're still in pre-slash territory, I know. But this will change soon. Oh yes, it will.


End file.
